President Bush signed a bill on Tuesday that makes a national “Do Not Call” list law. The List is intended to help consumers block unwanted calls from telemarketers. As expected the telemarketing industry is claiming the law will put them out of business. All I can say is so what? The fact is that if every business who wanted to contact me, called me on the phone, I would be taking calls all day long. I pay to have phone service for my convenience, not for the convenience of telemarketers who want to sell me something. If telemarketers want to call me they should pay my phone bill, otherwise it’s my phone.
The Telemarketing trade group, the Direct Marketing Association, has already filed suite on the grounds that the law inhibits free speech. As far as I’m concerned this is a completely bogus argument. Free Speech is not about advertising. Advertising is not “free”, you have to pay for it. It is also not political nor is it the expression of an individual, it is commerce and as commerce can be restricted.
It will be interesting to see how effective this list will actually be in reducing the number of telemarketing calls, but it’s a good first step if nothing else in establishing the idea that advertisers do not have unrestricted access to individuals using a service that those individuals pay for.
Now all they have to do is fix the Spam problem.